A Tale of Two Cities… Again

Michael Weiser is president of GFI Realty Services.

NEW YORK CITY—As students of New York history know, the current city boundaries were established in 1898. Prior to that, major portions of NYC — the bulk of the outer boroughs, constituting the vast majority of the Big Apple’s square footage — were simply parts of Long Island and Westchester County, and made up the entirety of Richmond County. (This fact, you may know, also explains why the Dodgers were known as a Brooklyn franchise and not a New York one. When the ball club was formed in 1884, Brooklyn was still its own municipality.)

Upon the city’s unification, New York, already the largest city in the country, added Brooklyn — what was the country’s fourth-largest city — to its ranks, cementing its status as the country’s largest market. Already a major city, the unified New York became the country’s true gateway city.